Maurice
Maurice is the cat protagonist in The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents. ''He has gained the ability to speak "human" by eating a talking rat that had consumed some of the less than ideal garbage dumped outside Unseen University, because of which it had learned to talk itself. Maurice soon realizes that other cats who can't speak and who aren't self-aware are stupid and that he has more in common with the other rats who have learned to speak. He begins to hang out with them instead. Like all cats, he is good at steering people (''A miouw here, a purr there, a little gentle pressure with a claw..). ''He hits on the idea of collecting a piper and with the rats performing the scam of ridding towns of rats as in the Roundworld legend of T''he Pied Piper of Hamelin ''made popular by various authors from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the Brothers Grimm to Robert Browning, It is clear from anecdotal evidence presented in ''Reaper Man that Maurice and his team have previously tried the rat-piping scam in Ankh-Morpork where they have scammed Vetinari out of $1000 AM dollars - something you would be lucky to get away with once. This and the conversation on the road to Bad Blintz suggests that escaping the long arm of Ankh-Morpork's jurisdiction may be the reason they have moved their operation to Überwald. Like Gaspode the talking dog, Maurice uses his ability to speak to influence people by making them think his voice is their own conscience or that others in a crowd feel the same way (hearing his voice in a crowd and believing another crowd member was talking). He is still allowed to catch rats, as long as they are Keekees, rat that do not have the ability to speak and can only squeak. When he catches a rat, he asks it to speak to save its life, a hesitation which cost the rat, Additives, his life because he stuttered. Eating Additives was the reason for Maurice's own speaking ability. As the novel develops, he develops other human-like attributes. He feels guilty for eating Additives and says, "Cats don't go around feeling sorry! or guilty! We never regret anything! Do you know what it feels like, saying "Hello food, can you talk?" Later he shows compassion, giving up one of his nine lives to save Dangerous Beans, one of the rats. At the end of the novel, Maurice leaves his rodents behind and finds a child to whom he asks "Hey, stupid looking kid. You wanna be lord mayor? No, down here kid" and goes off to start a new adventure (a parody of Dick Whittington and his cat). Maurice was last mentioned in The Science of Discworld IV: Judgment Day bonus pamphlet as having been arrested, creating a vacancy for the post of Regional Rodent Security Consultant in Überwald. It is also mentioned in a note in The Shepherd's Crown that there was to be another book featuring Maurice as a ship's cats. Category:Characters Category:Animals Category:Males Category:Cats